Enjoying their silent companionship, Magnus and Naisha continue their walks though the mountains. Naisha sets a good pace as she and Magnus work to rebuild their strength- Maisha from her time as an indenture, and Magnus from whatever happened to his body before he woke up on the beach.
At the same time, Mar’Khabazza tries to rid the Salt House of their snow leopard guest but the great cat rejects any attempt to communicate or dislodge it from Mar’Khabazza’s couch tht it has claimed as its own.
After his return from one of his walks, Magnus is met by a messenger from House Indi who invites him to House von Indi for a “simple dinner”.
Magnus arrives at Hose von Indi and is led to a small dining room. It is apparent that House von Indi is well provisioned but any overt displays of wealth by her husband have been removed to present the image of restrained elegance. After a rustic yet well-presented meal, Lady Catriona seduces him and they spend the night together. As has become custom, the next morning she then asks him for a favor:
She speaks, “Every year as the thaw opens the passes, House Rinji will be waiting with wagon trains loaded with speculative trade goods, as opposed to Empire-contracted freight. Every year House Rinji is correctly positioned to take advantage of market conditions that should not be known to us. As you can imagine, this gives them an incredible economic advantage over the rest of us.”
“Somehow Rinji learns about market conditions in the middle of winter, giving them enough time to prepare for the spring market conditions in secret. Now, I’m not sure how you managed the death of my husband and I won’t ask. All I know is that it took incredible skill to set up Ogslight Bates as the patsy for Balthus’ murder and I want you to bring that same skill to bear:
“I am asking you to break into house Rinji and/or House Bates for trading information. Somehow Rinji always is in position to exploit market arbitrage to their advantage. Somehow they are learning about market conditions before they open in the spring. I want you to learn how they do this.”
October 17, 7761
Magnus returns to the Salt House to tell the others about this new request and the Troupe decides to infiltrate house Rinji. First they decide to take three days to do surveilance of House Rinji to establish any patterns of comings and goings.
The break up the surveillance into shifts and begin watching the house.
October 18, 7761
Surveillance continues. Among the comings and goings of house servants, delivery persons, the rotations of the night shift for the day shift, Senator Mehr Stonehallow and Overseer Dathrohan both pay House Rinji a visit.
Back at the Salt House, the Snow Leopard’s wounds have healed and it gets restless. After some effort, it gets the Troupe to follow it out of the city and into the mountains. Not really understanding what they are getting themselves into they eventually follow the cat up the road and cutting west into the mulpara range.
Over the next day and a half, they climb several thousand feet and struggle the entire way. They are ill-equipped and ill-prepared for the journey and Mar’Khabazza is badly injured after a fall sends him sliding down the mountain face. Only the fact that they were roped together and Ravenna’s quick use of a fly spell saves him.
As night falls they spend the night exposed to the elements on a small step in the vertical face of a couloir. Only the billowing warmth of the Snow Leopard’s fur as it lies across their legs protects them from the direct effects of the elements, but it is a long, cold, miserable night at thirteen thousand feet.
October 19, 7761
The morning finds them alive and frostbitten, climbing past a rocky formation they have dubbed The Ship’s Prow and climbing into a saddle in the mulpara mountains.
At fifteen thousand feet this saddle is a slot between two peaks of the Mulpara Mountains that rise another ten thousand feed above them to either side. The area itself is a space maybe a hundred yards on a side and has the ruins of an altar to a long-forgotten god whose mark is an eight pointed star. Next to the altar is a pile of sudaar corpses- all violently slain by rending claws.
Across from the strange altar, a hundred yards away, is a ruined temple of some kind, maybe decades old and very much worse for the wear from the harsh elements.
Naisha points out that all across the saddle are the tracks of many dozen sudaar who marshaled here before moving down the mountain along a rough glissade across from their approach.
Unconcerned, the great cat doesn’t hesitate and makes a beeline across the saddle towards the ruins and here the troupe moves silently along the wall of one of the ruins, up a spiralling pathway to the approach to the old temple.
Within the temple is a group of sudaar, camped out among a large supply cache, and the Ghost Leopard rushes to the attack, followed closely by Mar’Khabazza, Naisha, Magnus Strange and Ravenna.
The sudaar put up a stiff resistance, with two black sudaar and a white sudaar shaman with some kind of white flying serpent putting backbone into the defense. The shaman lays about with spells and the white serpent blasts Naisha with a cloud of frost, driving her backwards but eventually, with the ferocity of the Ghost Leopard to aid them, the troupe wins through.
When the last sudaar falls to Magnus’ blade, the cat immediately enters the columned ruins of the main hall of the temple. At the far end of the cathedral is a stepped dais on swhich is a ten foot tall statue of a human male dressed in robes and turban, holding a staff topped with an eight pointed star. In front of this dais is a cilindrical depression in the floor, maybe three feet in diameter. The cat walks up to the depression and sits down in it, looking absently into the distance.
Slowly, gently, out of the corner of their eyes, the troupe begins to see ripples of light against the walls of the ruins, as if the light was reflecting off water in the indentation, though the pool remains bone dry. As the rippling light on the walls strengthens, the troupe begins to feel rejuvinated and the falling snow begins to fade before it hits the ground within the temple, and the temple itself becomes dry and warm.
Satisfied, the cat climbs the steps, sits down on the dais and begins to clean and groom itself contentedly.
Ravenna decides to stand in the basin and immediately feels arcane power flooding into her in a flood of ecstasy. She sighs as the feeling courses through her while Mar’Khabazza starts to question the leopard while standing at the foot of the dais. Through some kind of mass hallucination controlled by the Ghost Leopard they are able to communicate effortlessly.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“I am the boundary maker. I am the harmony definer.”
“Who summoned you here?”
“You did, Mar’Khabazza.”
“You know my name?” Mar’Khabazza sputters. “How do you know who I am? How do you know me?
“I have been waiting for you for many seasons. Ever since here was not here then.”
“When was then? Where was here? Who was I”
“You were Akin Kaliberda and when Xletheth came he left into the nexus and never came back. The ‘Maybe Is’ is now lost.”
“Where did this person go?”
As if in answer to this question, the great cat stands up and walks out into the storm, once again beckoning the troupe to follow. It leads them back to the strange altar and as it approaches, one of the sides begins to emit the same kind of firefly/sparks that they saw in the Duergar Mine underneath Opal.
October 20, 7761
Without really considering next steps, Magnus steps through the portal and finds himself in the strange nothingness nowhere of the Void. Behind him is the portal back to the reality of the saddle, and ahead of him extends a perfectly flat, colorless platform that extends into the nothingness: not dark, not light, no color, no sound. Just the strange swirling phenomenon of the act of perceiving nothing giving it identity and therefore existence.
He is followed shortly thereafter by Ravenna and Mar’Khabazza who are immediately overwhelmed by the strangeness of the nothingness and collapse to their knees. It takes them some time to gather their wits while Magnus stands patienly nearby, but the voice of the Leopard once again appears in their heads instructing them to focus on the reality of the pathways.
Ravenna says, “Are you here with us? I don’t see you.” and the cat replies, “I am here but without form. I cannot take material form here.”
After summoning their wits and their courage, the trio decide to do some exploring but proceed carefully as they are fully aware that to get disoriented and lost in this place would certainly lead to forever wandering pathways until death or madness took them. They walk to the first intersection that splits into 8ight different directions. Ravenna picks the first passage on her right which leads to an intersection with four passages leading off into the void. She picks another direction and leads them into an intersection with eight passages. Very soon, the ability to keep track of their choices becomes problematic and the group looses their nerve, retreating back through the intersections back to the gate to the altar on the saddle.
The troupe returns to the monastery to spend a night in relative comfort, bathed in the mysterious rippling glow of the indentation in front of the statue.
October 21, 7761
The morning of OCtober 21 opens to a stormy, gloomy day as the daylight continues to shorten before the long winter night falls. Ravenna spends some time relaxing in the arcane power of the indentation while Mar’Khabazza resumes questioning the cat.
“Tell me more about the ‘Maybe Is’?”
The Ghost Leopard pauses to lick its flank. “You are a Thing-Haver and keeper of Texotl, the ‘Maybe Is’. It is simply what it is.”
“And Xletheth?”
“Xletheth is the returning.”
The conversation not going anywhere productive, the Troupe decide to explore the ruined temple some more. In an upper floor of a half destroyed tower they find the dessicated corpses of six humans. They are dressed similarly to the statue in the great chamber below them in tattered robes of yellow and orange. Ravenna pickes through the mummified remains and retrieves a medallion similar to the top of the staff held by the statue.
She interviews the car further, “Who killed those people?”
“I did, some time ago as humans reckon it. They were pretenders attempting to claim the basin as their own while I was away. But the basin belongs to the keeper of ‘Maybe Is’ and no other so I killed them. Some of them fled to the human city below us and I let them go until I discovered that they had set up another temple to their false god of the sun so I killed them there as well.”
“Did you do that for the Xletheth?”
“Xletheth is the Recall. The Judgement. The Evaluation. The Thing Havers are called to Xletheth, but do not create Xletheth.”
October 22, 7761
The Troupe decides that the massed Sudaar raiding party is probably heading to Opal so the town leaders must be warned. They head back down past the Ship’s Prow down the couloir. The treacherous descent is made easier from the Ghost Leopard who aids them and by Ravenna who casts a flight incantation on anyone who slips and begins to fall down the mountainside.
They once again spend a cold, miserable night at a shelf in the middle of the descent under the fur of the Ghost Leopard.ght on a shelf wrapped up in cat.
October 23, 7761
The Troupe finishes its descent and arrives on the main caravan route north of Opal. They begin the half-day trek into Opal as the Ghost Leopard silently takes its leave of them.
Opon reaching town, they decide to split up, with Mar’Khabazza heading to warn the Postmaster, Magnus visiting the lower city to warn Senior Sergeant Joktuk. Ravenna delivers the message to the rangers of the Rangers Road while Naisha heads to the Salt House.
Mar’Khabazza’s meeting with Postmaster Malown is very productive, with the Postmaster summoning Marshal Redpath and having Mar’Khabazza repeat his tale of the approaching sudaar raid. In the end, the Marshal and the Postmaster decide to not make a public production about this lest it cause a panic. Instead, the Marshal decides to order an extended training exercise at the north end of Opal, pulling the city guardsmen out of the city and into a bivouac for extended drills.
Eventually, all arrive back at the Salt House for some of Masha’s delicious soup and discover that Savenia Loresong has been staying at the Salt House and keeping Masha company.